Happy Halloween

There is nothing like an old-fashioned American holiday to make you feel at home.   Yesterday, the Lozers celebrated Halloween in style.  When we arrived to class, our teacher had ready for us Halloween decorations and candy to enjoy.  Emily was dressed as a ninja, and our teacher was dressed as Adele.  During the middle of class, children from the local school visited our class dressed in Halloween garb!  It was very adorable, and we were happy to see that Halloween can be a holiday treasured by any culture.

After class, we all carved pumpkins that our teacher, Sarah, and Emily bought at the local market.  While others cleaned and carved their pumpkins, I made Macedonian-style candy apples.  Since Macedonia lacks caramel or crushed peanuts, I improvised by mixing some Euro Cream (kind of like Nutella) together and provided Nutri-seeds (a health mixture of crushed pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and chia seeds) so that we could dip slices of apples into the two.  It was definitely delicious and provided us with our sugar rush for the day.  However, the jar of Nutri-seeds fell and broke, and in an effort to salvage the seeds, we combined them with the rest in a bowl, but failed to check for shards of glass.  Emily deemed the treat “Trick-Or-Treat” candy apples.

Adele and a ninja

Macedonain candy apples

Mine is the attempted Macedonian flag (without a face)

Ksenija and Ted carved amazing pumpkins, and Emily’s would have been better if her pumpkin didn’t fall on the floor and crack.  Sarah had a migraine and did not want to carve her pumpkin, so I took over and tried to make the Macedonian flag.  I had a pretty crappy knife and little patience, so it came out looking pretty ugly.  Dan brought his pumpkin from home and we waited until it became dark before lighting candles in them.  When we returned to the school to light the jack-o-lanterns, we were impressed.  They turned out very well, and we displayed them in front of the school for the town to see.  We then retreated to the rear classroom to watch Hocus Pocus, as we feasted on pumpkin fries, pumpkin curry, and apples.

After the movie ended and we started cleaning, I noticed that four of the pumpkins had been stolen!  It was difficult to become angry because the perps had stolen all of the jack-o-lanterns EXCEPT for my ugly one!  We all had a great laugh before we returned home.  I guess it is true what Darwin says- “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but those that are so ugly nobody wants to mess with you anyway.”  Right before bed, a few of the older kids dressed in costumes and went house to house trick-or-treating.  Macedonia has the same tradition on Christmas Eve, where children knock on doors and receive candy, as well as on April Fool’s Day, where they dress in costumes.  But it was great to see the children here embrace an American holiday and to experience a little bit of home.